And Then There Were None: Claythorne's Hung
by the stargate time traveller
Summary: Describe Vera Claythorne and you know she is cool, efficient, and thoughtful, the perfect description of a murderess. Will she crack?
1. Chapter 1

I don't own And then there were None by Agatha Christie. I just own this.

Please let me know what you think.

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And Then There Were None.

Claythorne's Hung.

Vera smiled as she watched Hugo sleeping on the sand. She shivered slightly in the breeze, but the warmth of the man wrapped around her body warmed her up quite nicely.

Her smile deepened as she moved closer to him, nuzzling him much as a cat would. Hugo mumbled something in his sleep and he held on tightly to her body. The grip was tight, but nothing Vera couldn't handle by herself. She rested her head on his chest and did her best to fall asleep in his arms, not caring how the household reacted to them being out here.

While the Hamiltons were a good family and were good employers, she felt her worldview become more and more evolved with Hugo. It had surprised her a great deal when she had discovered she had fallen in love with Hugo, something she had never once imagined since it deviated a great deal with what she had expected.

Vera had never really known love. Oh, she had been loved by her parents, but this was different. She had never felt the 'spark' towards someone else though she had gotten involved many times with other men. When she had been a child, Vera had dreamt of finding her prince as though life were a fairy tale. But it wasn't until she grew older and learned the realities of life she began seeing life was not a dream, life was anything but a fairy tale.

As a result she had more or less given up on finding someone who was her love. But that hadn't stopped her from having fun as a child and then later as a young adult. Vera had lost her virginity as a birthday present to herself when she had become a teenager but those encounters were just meaningless sexual escapades.

She wasn't some kind of whore. Oh no. She just enjoyed having sex mostly because it helped her feel like a woman, and because she was trying to find some kind of distraction as she went through her life.

All of them were in the long run meaningless. She felt nothing for any of her old partners although she had gone for them because they were handsome, she had definitely felt _something _for the equally handsome Hugo. Vera gently lifted her head and studied Hugo in contentment. She felt her insides flutter as she studied him sleeping.

_Is this really love? _Vera asked herself as she studied him sleeping soundly. She had felt this strange feeling when she and Hugo's sister met him on the beach while she was trying to tend to Cyril, but she hadn't been able to identify it immediately. For a woman who prided herself on being in total control over herself and her emotions, it was unsettling to feel in control to being confused in the presence of a man, and as a result, it had taken her a long time before she realised she was in love with Hugo. When she had come to that realisation Vera had been taken by surprise because although she had longed for someone in her heart, she had always wondered if it would ever happen to her.

Vera pushed those thoughts aside; she had wasted enough time and energy going over the why about what had made her fall in love with Hugo as it was, and besides she was pleased she had at last nearly fulfilled her long hoped for dreams…

And then her good mood evaporated. While she loved Hugo and hoped that he asked her to marry him, she knew thanks to a conversation with Mrs Hamilton Hugo was bankrupt, and little Cyril was going to be the one who inherited the family fortune.

Vera grimaced as she thought of Cyril, with his annoying voice, the way he disrespected her when she tried to help him. Yes, while her Sports Mistress job at the Girl's School wasn't the best job in the world, Vera preferred the girls there compared to little Cyril. At least the girls there were more mentally developed and capable of looking beyond being little children.

When she had gotten the job, it had been her experience with young people that had won her over to the Hamiltons, unfortunately, her experience did not even reach the age group Cyril was currently at.

How could any child be so obnoxious and annoying? Vera knew she wasn't the only governess the Hamiltons had hired out to take care of the boy. She had heard it from a few of the staff who were brave enough to tell her the last governess had had enough of Cyril, and she had simply packed her bags and left after giving notice. Lord alone knew what she was doing, but according to the staff the woman had the patience of a saint, something which was proven to be a total lie or Cyril had just driven her insane.

Vera didn't know which, but she sympathised with the woman wholeheartedly since Cyril had a very unwelcome gift with annoying those hired out to care for him. From what she had found out very quickly, the Hamiltons had a very high turnover when it came to governesses for Cyril; none seemed to last long, though from what she had discovered the family had employed a woman for three months longer than the others.

That woman had set a record.

No-one else had even stayed for four months, never mind six.

It didn't help matters the boy's family spoiled him and filled his head with so much twaddle. Unfortunately, there was a grain of truth to it now she knew Cyril was telling the truth about inheriting the Hamilton family fortune since Hugo was now the second in line now Cyril was the first.

Vera had always given the boy's ramblings the attention it deserved; she had paid only a small amount of attention to the little brat, but she had taken it on board in the first place in case it was something important for her to think about later. The most irritating thing about Cyril's sorry excuse for a personality as he genuinely didn't seem aware of how others viewed him. The only people who seemed to love him were the parents, but Vera could understand that. She wasn't psychotic. She knew that of course, the boy's parents would love him wholeheartedly, and whenever she saw them together that love was visible for all to see.

However, every day was a struggle for her. Cyril's voice alone was enough to give Vera a headache. The boy's parents did have boundaries set down for him, but they relaxed them a bit too much for her liking. But Vera had learnt the hard way the boy was like an excitable kitten or a puppy, although truthfully she felt that was an insult to both kittens and puppies; both of them were nothing like Cyril. But when the boy was playing with her, he put all of his focus on those games and didn't bug her, but whenever she tried to get him doing what he termed 'boring stuff,' then she had her work cut out for her.

But the news the man she loved was practically going to be disinherited to make way for the obnoxious little brat had filled her with dread, and as she watched Hugo sleep, she realised there was a way of making sure Hugo did inherit…


	2. Chapter 2

I've decided, as with the Wargrave's Triumph story I'm going to use the BBC adaptation of And Then There Were None for Claythorne's final moments.

Please tell me what you think.

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Claythorne's Hung.

"_You forgot the one that shot me!"_

Vera choked as she reflexively tried to stop the noose from killing her with the chiding statement from Judge Wargrave ringing in her mind; it was funny how a sentence like that hung around your mind when you were dying. She clawed at the noose, feeling the tight rough rope curled around her throat as it strangled her; _God, it hurt so much!_

What did she expect?

She had stuck her head inside the noose, fully expecting to end her life after deciding it wasn't worth it anymore, only to be met with Wargrave who personally came to see her die.

And all that time she was listening to Judge Wargrave's voice in her mind while the rope choked her to death; she wondered if Wargrave had done this on purpose, hang her in the less humane manner possible and draw out her agony; she'd taken a rather morbid interest in the science of capital punishment shortly after she had tricked Cyril into swimming too far out before he was old enough and strong enough to take the strain.

She guessed it came about shortly after Hugo had promised her if he'd had the proof of what she had done to his nephew she would be swinging from a rope, though she had no idea what had made her mind desire to know about that, especially since she had gone out of her way to avoid the rope and anything _like _the noose.

Vera had no idea what had possessed her mind to research hanging, but she imagined if Hugo were here now instead of an insane serial killer who had spent four or five decades presiding over trials where nine times out of eleven he had the accused hung, only to come across another killer who Wargrave commented saw the judge as a "kindred spirit," though Seton hadn't come up with such a scheme as committing a series of murders on an island while he sat around, interacting with the same people whom he was plotting on killing, scribbling out the initials of the host who was supposed to have brought them all here, and turning the name "U.N OWEN" into "UNKNOWN" and listening to the others as they argued back and forth trying to figure out who the killer was, all the time laying down a false trail that would go nowhere.

Vera idly wondered what had happened to the piece of paper Wargrave had scribbled on while she choked on the noose, but she decided it didn't matter; the chances were Wargrave had gotten it back and destroyed it so then the detectives who'd turn up at some point in the distant future wouldn't have a clue, but she did wonder if it would ever occur to them they were looking for someone who didn't exist…

Vera gasped as her vision started to turn black and her efforts to break free had only exhausted her. She did not have long, and she knew that, but she just _couldn't believe _it was ending like this.

Blore had said it succinctly; she wished she had chucked that bloody letter in the bin, she wished she had never met Isaac Morris in that grotty little office in Soho. She wished she had never come to Soldier Island. But reality slapped her in the face as she heard herself give out a long, feeble, drawn-out gasping-moan. Her vision darkened even more.

In her last moments, she had more time to think.

Alright, only a few moments.

First came the bitter recriminations - it surprised Vera she was getting them at all, she had always prided herself on her intellect, something she had always prized more than anything else in a world that was becoming darker and darker by the day. Marston might have been ignorant, caring more about himself and his pleasures, but Vera and the others could tell there was something big coming on the horizon, something to do with Hitler, but her mind went back to the fact she only had a few moments left to live, and she needed to put things into perspective before she died.

What a wonderful task.

She had been so stupid. She still couldn't believe it.

How could she have gotten _everything so wrong?_

But she still couldn't believe it, she still could not understand how fast it had all happened, in the space of just a few days on this miserable island in the middle of nowhere, off the coast of Devon, with the deaths of eight other people - she wasn't sure and frankly didn't care one bit if Wargrave had done what he had set out to do or not, but she was going to say he hadn't done it yet even if the rest of her senses were dying out along with her rapidly darkening vision.

When she had arrived on this island with the others she had expected to find her new employer here waiting for her, waiting for her to get started on her new secretarial duties in the summer months when she wasn't working at the school while she interacted with nine other guests who were completely different from her in personality.

General MacArthur had been a nice soldierly gentleman even if you could see the shadow in his eyes which only came from old soldiers who'd _fought for King and Country. _Vera had always sneered at the slogan, she remembered the stories of how women would hand men white flowers on the streets to signify their cowardice, and what did they get in the long run? Nothing. The war had devastated Europe, and nothing really came out of it for Britain as far as Vera could tell.

As for the others…. the Rogers were sinister in some manner but she had ignored them at first even if she had promised herself to stay clear of them, especially after that brief meeting with Mrs Rogers.

Marston was an egotistical fool, and after listening to the manner in which he spoke Vera had no doubt in her mind if he had lived a little longer, he wouldn't have even _truly comprehended _the danger he was in, and where Blore and MacArthur had expressed their guilt, Marston had been at best indifferent to the murders he'd committed while driving his car, though what he would have done if he had not been the first to die, Vera didn't know.

Now she was thinking about it, in her last moments, Vera could work out why Wargrave had killed Marston first.

The man had been unrepentant, and Wargrave had known it from the off.

When the gramophone record had played, and everyone had panicked when they had heard that voice accuse them all of the different murders, Vera knew it wasn't a fake; she had seen the truth in the eyes of some, mostly because they hadn't had the mental fortitude or emotional control to properly mask their feelings.

When the gramophone had mentioned her and what she had done to Cyril, she had known it was no fake, but she had been able to control her reaction.

Just like Philip.

Just like Emily Brent, although the woman was disciplined enough after spending God alone knew how many years believing her religious mumbo-jumbo.

But Philip Lombard…

_Oh, how could I have been so stupid? I made the biggest mistake ever; I followed the crowd who claimed Philip and listened to all the paranoid nonsense about him simply because he wiped out that tribe, _Vera dimly thought to herself as he mind became even more fogged.

She didn't have long.

Philip and she had some kind of connection from the word go. Both of them had been controlled when the gramophone had played the first night they had been on the island, and the pair of them both came up with logical arguments; where everyone was content to ignore the disappearance of those stupid figurines Wargrave took away as trophies or something like that, she had noticed and tried to raise the alarm.

At the same time, Lombard had gone on a manhunt around the island, believing 'Owen' was on the island when all the time the killer had made him up and was actually one of the guests.

Alright, admittedly she had to accept the fact everyone on the island had been so sure Narrocott would be returning to the island, but he never did and it wasn't until MacArthur was killed on top of that everyone started to take the events on the island more seriously. Vera remembered how much contempt she'd felt towards the others barring Philip for being so willing to ignore the fact they were all in danger.

Yes, she had wanted to get away, but only because the killer who was out to get everyone on the island knew about her and Cyril. When she had heard the gramophone recording, she had wondered how the killer whom at the time she had known as Owen had even known since Hugo was the only one who did, and he didn't even have proof.

Vera let out a drawn-out sigh, feeling annoyance with how everything had gone so wrong. What made it all worse was she had come up to her bedroom and had stuck her head in the noose because she had been in a daze. She had been seeing Cyril everywhere, and she had been so certain the killer had been Philip.

"_You forgot the one that shot me!" _

Vera's breath began to get stilted as she felt her vision going. She couldn't feel her hands, never mind any move any of her fingers. She had enough time left to mentally _kick _herself for her final mistake.

_Of course, _Wargrave would have saved the bullet that had supposedly killed him!

It was so _logical _Vera should have seen it, but she had been so surprised to see Wargrave alive and well - for the moment, she had no idea if he was dead - and she was struggling not to die herself after shoving her head into the noose she had foolishly slipped on in her daze after seeing Cyril and thinking there was nothing else for it, she had to die herself.

She had pleaded with the old bastard to show mercy and to let her go, she had been so certain she had leverage over him but she hadn't.

Wargrave had been in control the entire time, and he'd loved every moment of it. She could see it now.

He must have been inwardly laughing when he showed her that bullet, the one that was supposed to have killed him, and he had pulled the chair away knowing he was still in control. And his plan was still intact.

Vera breathed out her last, and her vision went black.

In an instant, she was dead.


End file.
